It was only one year ago that the world welcomed the launch of IPv6, the long-anticipated solution to the problem of the world running out of IP addresses. In its first year, IPv6 has started to take root. Take a look at Google’s IPv6 adoption chart, for example, and you will notice that the growth has been exponential over the past year. However, the communications protocol still has a long way to go before becoming widespread. Over the next several years, the need for IPv6 will become more evident though. North America will run out of IPv4 addresses this month, according to the Internet Society’s infographic we previously referenced; meanwhile, Europe and Asia have run out already. On top of this, the increasing number of web-enabled smart devices, including smartphones, tablets, household appliances and vehicles, will put a further strain on IPv4’s networks. Despite the glaring need for IPv6, IT infrastructure is still a limiting factor in its adoption. Rainer Enders had this to say in an IT Business Edge article: “The truth is, the transition to IPv6 will be a slow rollout that will happen over the next 10 years. There’s still too much work that needs to be done from providers in terms of upgrading their wiring, pipes and firmware.” Sadly, this is still the case, as many organizations have used workarounds like Network Address Translation (NAT) as band-aids rather than confronting the inevitable transition to a long-term solution. Luckily, organizations are slowly starting to embrace the new era of the Internet. Operators such as AT&T, Verizon and Deutsche Telekom have championed the new protocol, with each...

Now that we’ve had a few weeks to consider the aftermath of IPv6 Day 2012, we wanted to look into what the industry is saying are the key takeaways – so far – from this year’s event, in which thousands of organizations switched over to IPv6 – permanently. After all, IPv4 website addresses are essentially exhausted, while IPv6 has more than 340 trillion addresses, according to the Internet Society. This, the organization points out, is an IPv4 address for every star in the universe. Mind-boggling, right? Here’s what else people are saying: IPv6 traffic didn’t spike on World IPv6 Day, but did see a gradual and significant increase starting two weeks before the actual day, 6 June, according to Arbor Networks. Internet Protocol version 6 traffic grew from 0.06 per cent to 0.15 per cent in that period, it said…The increased levels of IPv6 traffic has been steady since the event, Arbor added. “This shows that hopefully many of the newly enabled IPv6 services are here to stay – another important milestone on the road to ubiquitous IPv6 adoption.” – Adam Bender, ComputerWorld While the commitment to always-on v6 was a big one, some experts predicted that we wouldn’t see a big jump in traffic rates during this year’s World IPv6 Launch. The reason for this was that many of the providers who are committing to v6 had already turned up their networks ahead of the launch and would be running the day of the event. However, Owen DeLong, IPv6 evangelist for Hurricane Electric, predicted a small spike in traffic would occur on June 6, followed by a leveling off and gradual move upward...

By Nicholas Greene IPv6 Day 2012 is just a day away on June 6. For those just getting up to speed, here’s the back story. IPv6 Day started in 2011 when over a thousand major website hosting organizations and ISPs — including Google, Facebook, Akamai, and Yahoo — got together in order to execute a global ‘test flight’ of IPv6 over the course of several days. This helped them expose a number of potential issues involved with a full implementation of IPv6, in addition to allowing them to take the new protocol for a spin, and prepare for the inevitable shift. Last year’s experiment went without any major hiccups and we also discovered that IPv4 and IPv6 are capable of playing nice with one another– a rather important factor in implementing the new protocols. After 24 hours of testing, the organizations shifted their websites and services back to the old standard. This year, they’ll be switching over again…but this time, they won’t be switching back. With that in mind, it isn’t difficult to see why June 6 is a rather important day. We’re pretty much about to witness history in the making, in a manner of speaking. Since IPv6 Day 2011, all the organizations involved have been busying themselves getting their content delivery networks and services primed and ready for the big day. One question remains- how will the global launch of IPv6 change the Internet as we know it? What effect will it have on how people browse? How will it revolutionize security and connectivity? The first thing you need to know about World IPv6 day is that...

By Sylvia Rosen It’s out with IPv4 and in with IPv6. At least that is what all the experts are saying. The depletion of IPv4 was proclaimed a year ago, and now nearly on the anniversary of this announcement, we think this is the perfect time to revisit this issue and see if IPv4 predictions have changed. As most of our readers know, the never ending growth of the Internet has created a demand for more addresses that IPv4 cannot supply; however, IPv6 can. As a result, experts are expecting that business professionals will be among the first to prepare for the switch. Unfortunately, experts also predict a few obstacles along the way. “The drop-dead deadline for external websites to support IPv6 is January 1, 2012. When we get to the end of 2011, we’re going to have a lot of people connecting over IPv6 and that doesn’t bode well for the content providers who don’t support IPv6. Unless you’re willing to have the path between you and one of your customers go through a third-party gateway that you don’t know and that you don’t have control over, you want to add IPv6 to your website. Then when customers try to access your site, you have a straight path with IPv6 and with IPv4.”—John Curran, President and CEO of the American Registry for Internet Numbers. “To send and receive data on the Internet, every connected device needs an IP address – and 2011 was the year we finally started running out of IPv4’s unique, 32-bit sequences. In 2012, smart businesses will want to get an IPv6 address in addition...